Day Laborers Sue Chicago

Day laborers look for work outside of a Home Depot in Chicago. A recent lawsuit filed by day laborers access Chicago of harassment. In These Times

“Day laborers have been suffering from police harassment for decades in this city and it’s come to a point where we want to do something to end it,” says B. Loewe, planning director of Latino Union of Chicago, a workers’ rights organization that helped prepare the lawsuit. In the first lawsuit filed by day laborers against the city, the two workers allege wrongful detention, violation of First Amendment rights, conspiracy to violate civil rights and malicious prosecution.

The lawsuit cites examples of police intimidation, such as an alleged instance where a police officer forced an employer and three day laborers out of a car at gunpoint, and an alleged sting operation in which undercover officers, posing as contractors, lured workers to a Home Depot to discuss employment and then arrested them for criminal trespass.

At least 150 charges and arrests have been dismissed in court in favor of the day laborers, according to the Latino Union, highlighting the tenuous relationship between the police and workers’ right to assemble on public space.

“We’ve seen workers being arrested repeatedly for nothing more than just trying to feed their families by looking for work on public property,” says Jessica Acee, an organizer with the Latino Union.

Nationally, at least 117,000 people are employed or looking for jobs as day laborers, according to a 2006 report by UCLA’s Center for the Study of Urban Poverty. In Chicago, about 800 day laborers—predominantly immigrant, Latino workers, or jornaleros, who typically work in construction, moving and landscaping—are looking for work on any given day.

While Chicago doesn’t have laws or ordinances prohibiting day laborers from seeking employment in public places, officials in other cities have tried to pass measures to curb them from congregating.

In April 2006, federal judges prohibited police in Redondo Beach, Calif., from arresting laborers seeking work on the street. And in November 2006 in Freehold, N.J., officials agreed—after a three-year court battle—to allow laborers to seek work in public places without fines. Also that month, a federal judge ruled that city officials in Mamaroneck, N.Y., discriminated against Latino day laborers by stepping up police presence, closing a hiring site and fining contractors who approached day laborers.

Source: In These Time